︎






NOUS SOMMES ICI 

A documentary series co-directed with students in agriculture high school and workers of a pedagogical farm
Video, installation, audiovisual walk, printed edition

Bergerie nationale de Rambouillet
2023

NOUS SOMMES ICI is a documentary video series produced during a residency at the Bergerie Nationale de Rambouillet: a unique place that brings together an educational farm, an agricultural training center and research hub. I led this collective creation with several classes, employees of the Bergerie Nationale and young habitants of Rambouillet.

Across the fall and winter of 2022-23, I opened a collaboration to 80 persons, to picture the territory of the Bergerie Nationale and its agricultural training center within the Park of the Château de la Ville de Rambouillet for each and every one in their own way. We filmed about thirty places and recorded the stories associated with them. In these video capsules, the young apprentices tell us about their training and their work in the world of horse-riding. Their passion for the sport, their aspirations, the aprenticeship, the responsibilities and professional challenges that make them transition quickly from mid school to adult life. They also talk about community life at the boarding school and the new dynamics of this autonomy, gaining a more independent way of life than within the family home. Growing up between the city and the countryside, between high school and the workplace, positions are affirmed and projects are defined.

Like the one it occupies in the life and work at the Bergerie Nationale, the animal has a central place in these stories. The apprentices and the animation team on the farm question their relationship with animals, and the relationships they establish between living beings, humans and non-humans. 

The 33 videos were shown in an exhibition at La Grange nord in march 2023, and are still visible throughout the site: QR-codes installed in situ allow access to the videos at the very place of each filming. A printed newspaper brings together in a map all the QR codes, to allow the public to wander through the spaces through thematic video routes. The newspaper, distributed to the general public, also makes it possible to bring the work to life beyond the temporalities of the exhibition, and the spaces of the Bergerie.
The project was carried out during an artistic residency mission within the Bergerie Nationale, with the support of the Drac Île de France.